Charlie wrote:
> I posted this this in r.g and r.g.e and then wondered if any of you on
> your side of the planet have done this or have experience with this, as
> you seem to be ahead of the curve. The more I read, the more excited I
> become about it. I'm particularly enthused about the long term and
> persistent aspects of this.
>
>>After reading Bill's posts about Rodale's compost work with leonardite
>>dust and the essay by Rebecca Lines-Kelly that mentioned terra pretta,
>>I started looking into the use of charcoal, crushed or dust, as a
>>compost and soil amendment. Has anyone used charcoal dust or have any
>>thoughts or results?
Okay, without actually reading all the stuff, but getting annoyed with
the lack of pactical stuff compared to "buff my academic career BS", my
2c is;
Charcol is really slash and burn agriculture. Good for about 2 years
then it effects fades, which is why all these communities were
essentially nomadic.
There also seems to be a current fad for soaking charcol in liquid
fertiliser then burying it as a slow delivery tool, but this relies on
externaly procured fertilisers.
Now, Amazon Basin, El Dorado and a spanish explorer that every expert
swore was a kook making up stories as there was absolutely no way that
the rainforest was going to sup****t the millions of natives that he said
it did. BTW, rainforest actually has an exceddingly poor soil if you
didn't know.
Then there was a TV doco about a sudden penchant for this soil from
built up along the Amazon for top dressing on Brazilliam gardens. When
examined, it turned out to be loaded with CHAR, not charcol.
Then someone put two and two together and worked out that this highly
fertile deposits were the built up soild deposits were the remains of
the garden beds of the native inhabitants of the Amazon Basin of the
time of the spanish explorer. Further, whe someone got off their arse
and walked around and mapped the area, then tested the capacity of the
soil, there was enough capacity to sup****t the millions of people
claimed by that explorer.
The soil "deposits" were the raised garden beds, which had been made by
bulding up soil that was higher than the annual floods and the soil was
loaded with char particles, which was made it very fertile.
I notice that the first Terra-Pretta articles continues to show the
stupidity of the academics that swore El Dorado was kook land. Anyway..
Now, as I understand it, char is a stage before charcoal and so what I
want to know, is what is a good backyard method for producing char, not
charcol?
The only information I can find is about using other feedstocks such as
coal, but as I have large trees and not a coal mine in my backyard,
these are no help.
Has anyone here been a charcoal burner?
Thinking that I just need to interrupt the process earlier and grind the
wood down.
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